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I've been swinging back and forth between picking up a NAS like this one, or repurposing an old netbook I have lying about with some Linux server software and simply attaching drives to it via USB. Suggestions?Reply

I would just suggest picking up a copy of WHS (only $59 at NewEgg) and eityher using your old laptop or making a cheap server. I tried various solutions, such as a home-made NAS and Linux (Amahi). In the end, it's just so much nicer using Windows Home server. My only regret was wasting so much time with other solutions before getting WHS.Reply

I'll second the comment about trying Windows Home Server. I have been using Version 1 for several years and it works great. Version 2 is getting good reviews although a few people were upset that it doesn't continue the use of Drive Extender. That didn't bother me too much as there are add-ons for DE if you really feel you need that functionality. The Newegg price for WHS is very tempting. I may have to grab a copy of Version 2 and upgrade my configuration.Reply

The GUI is Windows XP based - very light. You use a console app to connect to it most of the time, anyways. The GUI comes in handy when you need it. A lot of us just don't know Linux all that well to attempt running it without a GUI. I also use WHS to share (sort of) a scanner. Reply

I too agree that for most of the people that read Anandtech, a DIY NAS will get you way more features for same or less money. I was pretty psyched about WHS until they removed data redundancy in the new version (I thought that was it's best feature!). Now I'm using unRAID and love it. My 14 TB unRAID box draws ~35w idle and ~80w peak. Really like being able to mix drive sizes w/o penalty while having parity.Reply

just got a 20 euro more expensive buffalo 2-disk NAS, which allows proper hot swap, but it is insanely loud (for what it is).I'd expect these enclosures to be silent and the disks to be minimally intrusive, but this one will have to be hidden in an insulated cupboard..Reply

Would like to see some power tests in these home NAS reviews. Do these things have some sort of sleep mode? That's the main reason I can see for going this route vs just using some old hardware laying around.Reply

I do have the N2R1 (actually I gifted a second one to my father since his previous ICYBox was a huge loud piece of crap). It is somewhat fast, silent, has a nice feature set also including the DVD or even BlueRay write and runs a modified Debian which allows for some nifty tricks like the use of rdiff-backup. I also do have other soft- and hardware RAID systems running.

Doing software SATA RAID on an Intel based system /may/ be faster and allows using the very useful LVM but is far less stable due to funky link resets from which md sometimes won't recover, sucks far more power and is nowhere as easy to administer -- not that I'd care, but you get the idea...

Iff I ever decide to do another Linux RAID it'll prolly have a 3Ware (or similar) Hardware RAID controller, again. Other than that I'd go for another LG NAS or some more expensive brand...eReply

I assume that the N2A2 will let you copy data from it with one disk degraded. When I read the article the first time, I (hopefully) mis-understood that you HAD to tear the unit apart to recover it. Re-reading it I see that it was more "just to see if it could be recovered" in the event of a board failure.

I guess I can see from their point of view to simplify support - maybe they don't want to deal with HDD compatibility. But like you imply that didn't seem to be a problem for releasing the N2R1D. It does seem strange to need to RMA the entire unit for a bad disk.

With HDD failures, the end-user can recover the data while in the degraded mode. For motherboard failures, I am not sure what LG will do in terms of data recovery (but the end-user can tear down and recover from the hard disk -- as covered in the data recovery section)

I am not sure why LG decided to introduce this type of NAS into the market. As a networked hard disk, this makes more sense (but not as a NAS competitor to D-Link's and Netgear's offerings in the same price range).Reply

... I'm also not sure what to do. or just continue to use my normal pc and setup intel raid.A NAS with decent perfromance figures, eg. one of the QNAP or synology types with an atom processor are about the same price here as a DIY NAS with a Core i3. Note that Core i3 is only like 40$ more than brazos/atom build. That includes Chenbro case (=expensive). This is were DIY fails because these "small server parts" are very expensive and I don't have space for a second "normal" pc case.Reply

If you have the cash to spare, I think the 'buy' option is the preferable solution (compared to the headaches that building your own system brings)

Also, for most home usage scenarios, PCs are an overkill for NAS solutions. A simple hard disk serving content over the network with the help of an embedded NAS chipset (like the one from Marvell) will be much more power efficient and easy to manage.Reply

Stop wasting time with crap like this.If you mean to review NAS boxes, find some that are actually worth it, with space for 5 or 6 3.5" drives in RAID 5, preferably with hot-swap support, or just don't bother.Reply

The 5 / 6 drive RAID5 solutions you mention are targeted towards SMBs, and we do cover those too. By the way, we have two boxes which came in after this currently in the review queue (QNAP and Netgear), and I am just starting out with the benchmarking for those.Reply

I have been using Version 1 for several years and it works great. Version 2 is getting good reviews although a few people were upset that it doesn't continue the use of Drive Extender. That didn't bother me too much as there are add-ons for DE if you really feel you need that functionality. The Newegg price for WHS is very tempting.[[ w w w -( upsfashion )- c o m ]]I personally feel that the site is very good, there are many things we need, so I want to share with everyone. I believe you will like it.Reply

first many thanks to AnandTech for the great testings on this NAS.It was very nice to see that you have also a deep lock at last single detail,data recovery when the main board breaks down.You have done a great job!

Did some body has experience with the NFS shares on this LG NAS?

I was a little bit surprised as I have seen this feature in the Web Interface,because of it was not tested here and it was also not in the feature list of LG and shop I've bought it

After a quick test, the disillusion I've realized that NFS on N2A2DF2 is very slow only 2 MB/S writing,with a mirrored 2TB HDD drives.